Data Handling Project

Planning

I intend to investigate the relationship between the number of hours of TV watched per week by students and their KS2 maths results. I think the more TV a student watches the less successful they will be.

Hence, I expect a negative correlation i.e. the two sets of data will be inversely proportional.

Firstly, I will retrieve the relevant data i.e. gender, hours of TV watched and maths results from the spreadsheet provided. As there are on average 200 students in each year, years 7-11, almost over 1000 students, it would be difficult to analyse such large data. Therefore, I will pick one of the five year groups randomly and base my investigation on the selected year group.

I will sort the year group into two sub-groups according to their gender. I will then apply the method of systematic sampling to the data. This will make the data more represent able. I have randomly selected Year 9.

As there are 261 students in Year 9 and I intend to have a sample of 30 students I will therefore select every 8th student and randomly eliminate two, thus leaving me with a sample of 30 students.

261

30

= 8.7

261

32 -2 = 30

8

The collected data sample of 30 students is the raw data. This needs to be arranged into what is known as frequency distribution where like quantities are counted and displayed by writing down how many of each type there are i.e. writing down their frequencies.

I will use bar charts, as these are used for discrete data, to analyse the data about KS2 maths results comparing the results for males and females.

The average number of hours of TV watched per week, being continuous data, will be analysed by recording the results using histograms.